Buddies

The young lieutenant slept on a litter. The older sergeant sat beside him on the stony beach shingle. The sergeant watched the wave-tossed, angry sea and the boats skittering in and out from the invasion armada offshore. He craned his neck at the swarms of black-and-white striped airplanes overhead.

The lieutenant had been his Ranger Buddy since they joined the platoon four months before. To the US Army Rangers, the buddy system was all-important. Your Ranger Buddy was your legs when yours had given out; your eyes when yours were tired. Your shared rations, missions, tents, money between paydays. You were a part of one another.

Behind them rose a hundred feet of sheer rock called Pointe du Hoc. Allied planners decided that the bunkers on top of the cliffs contained large coastal guns that could shoot up the D-Day landing forces. So in went the Rangers.

A moan rose from the litter. "Sir?" the sergeant asked, straining to hear over the din of the surf.

"Hello, Sergeant," the lieutenant answered softly, his speech thick from morphine. "How's the platoon?"

"Why, they're just fine, sir. Just fine," the sergeant replied cheerfully, not looking at him. "I just thought I'd keep you company until the medics evacuated you."

"That's very good of you, Sergeant, but you really should be with the men."

"They're in good hands, sir. Sergeant Westphall is in charge of them now. We're beach security, you know, sir. You do remember that from the briefing, don't you, sir? Nothing in particular to do for the time being."

"Yes, I remember, Sergeant." He was quiet again. His breathing was slow and shallow.

A breeze picked up a part of a rope ladder on the cliff, battering it against a hollow rock. The sergeant turned and looked back at it, then back to the sea.

"How did the platoon do, Sergeant? Did we get up the cliffs first?"

"Yessir, we certainly did," the sergeant answered, remembering the assault. The grappling hooks and ropes shooting up the cliffs, the grenades tumbling down, the near-vertical grazing fire that swept the wall, Rangers with bayonets dug into the rock face digging their own handholds. "We got up there in record time. We beat Baker Company's assault platoon by a full minute."

Sure we did. A full minute while we took out two machine guns with four guys. Four out of forty that were supposed to get up there. While the rest of the platoon and the whole of Baker Company was pinned down and getting shot we found a way up a crevice and came across the top of that cliff like Gangbusters. Sure, we got up there all right.

"We got the guns then?"

"Yessir. We got the guns." The guns that hadn't been emplaced yet. The bunkers were there, the mounts were there. But no guns. "Mission accomplished, sir."

"That's good." Silence again. "How about casualties? Did we suffer many casualties?"

"Not bad, sir." While our rope was climbing up the hidden crevice three others were cut down or broke loose. Fifteen guys fell. Three got up again. And the Kraut machine guns sprayed the cliff face while we worked up the wall, hand-over-hand, on ropes and scaling ladders and fingerholds.

"There's McGivney, he's dead. Rodgers too, I think. Kalemann; he busted his skull. Pitts got a bullet in the shoulder. And you, sir." And there's Kreegar, who broke his neck. And Henderson was shot through the head. And Willie Smith got blown up by a grenade. And Charles got hung by barb wire when he slipped near the top. And Mitgang...

"Yes. What do they say about me, anyway?"

"Oh, you'll be up and around in no time, sir." No time at all up in heaven you'll be. The bullet that went into your shoulder from above you, sir, it made a mess of your liver. And then when you fell seventy feet or so you broke your back, sir.

But that wasn't enough, sir. Nossir, not for you. You had to survive all that. You, the All-American, the poster model for the Boy Next Door. But you won't survive it for long. The medics say no more than a couple hours...

The lieutenant chuckled softly. "You're a good friend, Sergeant. But you're an awful liar."

"Yessir," the sergeant answered. "I'm a lot of things, sir. The Lieutenant knows me too well."

"I'm supposed to, Sergeant. Isn't that what being a Ranger Buddy is all for?" He moaned softly, catching his breath. "I wanted to thank you, Sergeant. For being my Ranger Buddy."

"No thanks needed, sir. Just doin' what I'm supposed to. Ranger Buddies is all about lookin' out for each other." Die, you poor kid. Get this over with. Die or get up and start running. Dear God take him now, don't let him hang here...

"I want to, anyway. I never did thank you for getting me out of that scrape at Anzio..."

"It was the staff, sir. Wasn't just you."

"I know. Me. Captain Beel. Major Stanley. Colonel Rudder. Lot of us. If it wasn't for that..."

"Never mind that, sir." The sergeant lit two cigarettes and put one in the lieutenant's mouth. "That's just my job."

A dull boom rolled across the water. Down the beach, the sergeant thought. I thought we had troubles. Wonder what's goin' on down there?

"Yeah.," the lieutenant said softly. "But if is wasn't for that we wouldn't have got to be friends."

"Well, sir, I think there's more to it than that..."

"...And if you hadn't socked that Bobbie."

"Yessir," the sergeant chuckled, flicking the ash off the lieutenant's cigarette. "That got me busted down to platoon sergeant, then you got moved outta staff when you bailed me out. But that damn Limey deserved it."

"I suppose," the lieutenant answered, coughing. "What'd he do?"

"Called us 'damn foreigners.' Us. We come over here to get the Brits outta a jam and we get called 'damn foreigners.' But how was I supposed to know he was a cop?"

"And a Deputy Chief Inspector at that," the lieutenant whispered. Silence again.

A bird squeaked and crackled as it flew across the beach, lighting on the cliffs behind them.

"How did Millen do, Sergeant? I was worried about him. He was so frightened."

"Who? Oh, Millen. Just fine, sir. Just fine." Led our rope, the sergeant remembered. Led the charge across the cliff. Took out the first machine gun all by himself. Ran out of ammo for his Garand, so he started picking up Krauts and throwing them off the cliff. Funny how those real big guys get so scared...

"That's good, Sergeant. That's good." The sergeant leaned over and removed the butt from the lieutenant's lips.

"Is it dark, Sergeant? Is it night?"

"Yessir," the sergeant replied, looking up at the white glowing ball of the noon sun behind the grey overcast. "Night sir."

"I'll be going soon, Sergeant," the lieutenant whispered. "Tell my folks I did what they asked me to do."

The sergeant remembered the picture of the boy's parents, storekeepers in Nebraska, looking brave for their only son. "I'll do that, sir."

"Mail my letters for me..."

Then there was that girlfreind of his: copper hair and fresh-scrubbed freckles, lacy white collar on a cornflower blue dress and perfect white gloves. "Yessir."

"One more thing, Sergeant."

"Yessir?"

"Where are you from?"

"Why, the lieutenant knows I'm from the Army."

"You weren't born in the Army, Sergeant. You told me that much." The lieutenant smiled thinly. "Where were you born?"

The sergeant stared out at the sea. A vision of the cinder-colored baseball field next to his house came back to him. The last time he saw his father just before ran off flashed in his mind: cauliflower ears and a broken nose from prizefighting, the young barmaid who was to be a new 'mother.' He had to imagine an older brother who he hadn't seen or heard from in ten years. He wondered vaugely how he might go about trying to find him. "I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, sir."

"Pittsburgh," the lieutenant coughed again. "About as far from this place as Grand Forks."

In more ways than one, sir. You wouldn't believe how much further. "Yessir."

"Take care of the men, Sergeant."

Of course, sir. I'll watch their asses and wipe their noses and crack their chops and censor their mail and protect them from the yahoos -- present company excepted, sir -- called officers who seem bent on getting them killed. "Yessir. Keep your powder dry and tomahawk sharp, sir."

In a few minutes the sergeant looked over at the lieutenant. His face was calm, his boyish eyes dull and steady. A fleck of mud on his check seemed somehow incongruous. The sergeant moistened a finger and rubbed off the offending spot. He closed the boy's eyes.

After some minutes the sergeant stood up and started, slowly, walking down towards the water. He motioned to the medic on the other side of the rock spur, pointing behind him. "All yours, Mac."

The sergeant shuffled but gradually gained speed and purpose. The platoon, he thought. Needs everybody they can get. "Westphall," he called in his familiar, gravel voice. "Get 'em on the boat. Let's get back in the war. How many we got left?"

"Countin' you an' me, fourteen."

And we hit the beach three hours ago with forty, the sergeant thought.

They boarded the landing craft that would carry the remnant of the platoon down the French shore, to a place called Omaha Beach.

As the got aboard one of the newer replacements in the platoon nudged his old-hand buddy. "What's got into the Sarge?" he wondered aloud.

"Nothin', rookie," the buddy replied. "Nothin' at all. Sarge just got some sand in his eyes, is all."